Buffy The Vampire Slayer

The rumors rampant on the Internet suggest that "Buffy," currently in the middle of a vastly intriguing sweeps cycle, will end this season, its seventh. As much as I mourn this possibility, I wonder nearly as much what it will mean to leave behind my nerdly Internet obsession of the last couple of years, the world of spoilers, gossip and "Buffy"-related discourses, some serious, some hilarious, nearly all insightful and fascinatingly intense in a sociological sense.

The vast majority of television viewers reading this column are groaning right now. "Not this ’Buffy’ beef again," they’re saying. "Why don’t these weirdos just shut up already?" I get this, because I’ve been there, having resisted the tug of "Buffy" for years.

I actually saw the 1992 movie "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," starring Kristy Swanson and Donald Sutherland, when it was released. It was written by Joss Whedon, the genius creator and executive producer of the TV series, but his original vision of a high school cheerleader type fighting all sorts of demons, real and imagined, didn’t quite make it onto the screen.

But "Buffy" the television show, which became a critical darling in its first year as a midseason replacement series on the WB, did embody Whedon’s bizarre vision. Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), the chosen one, i.e. the teenage girl with special vampire-fighting powers, moved to Sunnydale, a Southern California town located on the "Hellmouth." She made new friends and was soon in tormented love with a vampire named Angel. Whatever. I’d already had my Anne Rice era a good 15 years ago, thank you very much, so I passed.

The critical acclaim just kept coming, though. Actually, it has never stopped. "The most daring, innovative and emotionally complex show on television," the New York Times raved last fall. Academics love it. Published papers on the world of Buffy include "Biological Warfare and the Buffy Paradigm," linking America’s war on terrorism with what Buffy and her friends face on a weekly basis. Last year, an English university held a full-scale symposium on "BTVS" called "Blood, Text and Fears."

So grudgingly, I’d tune in occasionally to see what the fuss was about. At some point in Season 4, something struck a chord with me. It could have been the irresistible dry wit of Oz (Seth Green), occasional werewolf and boyfriend to Buffy’s best friend Willow, or maybe the rapport between Buffy and Giles, her British watcher, who even in the fourth season was still flummoxed by the ways of the American teen. At any rate, I started trying to remember to tape it every week.

Chronic VCR failures led me to Times business reporter George Avalos, who taped religiously. George had been pushing "BTVS" on me all along, but he was coming off an "X-Files" high, so I didn’t entirely trust him at first. As my interest in the show grew, George became my tutor. Prompted by my incessant questions about the show’s chronology and mythology ("How do vampires have sex?"), he handed over his old "Buffy" tapes, nearly complete sets of Seasons 1 through 3. For a few weeks in the summer of 2000, I watched three or four shows in a night, marveling at the sharp wit of the scripts and the way the writers dropped clues to future plot points, sometimes two years prior. I was finally there, a devotee.

But my obsession has mostly been a lonely one. My smart chick friends will analyze every fragment of "The Bachelorette" with me, but "Buffy"? No way. By the time my brother gets halfway through reading this column — if he gets that far — he’ll be composing an e-mail mocking my passion for "BTVS." Even my hip little niece, now 20, dismisses "Buffy" as stupid. The general public seemed to agree with this consensus: Because the show lacked strong ratings and was so expensive to produce, the WB dumped it a couple of years ago, and the network that picked it up, UPN, is the TJ Maxx of television.

All this disdain drove me to the Internet. George clued me in to some of the sites devoted to the show, including the invaluable "Loey’s Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which provides both early sneaks of new episodes, culled from satellite feeds, and clever synopses of older shows (http://members.aol.com/LRL94/buffy.html). One site, run by someone with the pseudonym Pysche, posts full transcripts of each episode of "Buffy" and its spinoff "Angel," which is nearly as addictive (http://StudiesInWords.de/). Hilariously cruel synopses can be found at Television Without Pity (http://televisionwithoutpity. com), a site I’ve become very fond of for its sassy, sarcastic edge. For links to every Buffy news story, spoiler and essay out there, there’s www.slayage.com.

Confession: All of these sites are bookmarked on my home and work computers (All research for this column! Begun two years ago! I plan ahead!). I’m guilty of reading "Buffy" spoilers all the time. They never ruin my appetite for the upcoming episode; I’m that hungry. The "Buffy" community is a clique without judgment; the only entrance requirement is to be caught up in the show’s mystique. I wouldn’t call my participation in it socializing by any means — it’s more like skulking — but it’s the closest I’ve come to being in an online community.

So if "BTVS" goes off the air, as predicted, I’ll face two voids this spring. Not only will I be deprived of fresh episodes of the show, but I’ll also miss my appointments with this strange little community of like-minded freaks I’ve stumbled into. I’ll miss the faceless gang of Buffy worshippers burning up the Internet. Thanks, Loey. And Psyche. You too, Leoff. And you nonbelievers? There’s still a chance for you: "Buffy" Seasons 1 through 3 are already available on DVD. God willing, the rest will come soon.